The Presidential Election

Company: US Government   Designer: Thomas Jefferson, et al.   Genre: Political/Negotiation   Players: 3-300,000,000   Time: approximately 20 months

I typically don't write about games that I don't enjoy.  This is for the simple reason that I won't review a game that I haven't played at least three times, and if I truly dislike a game I'll probably put it on the shelf after a single try.  But every few years I find myself embroiled in a bizarre game called The Presidential Election, and as I am currently playing it for the fourth time I feel qualified to review it (even though it's not a game I particularly care for).

Here's the premise.  All the players are "Citizens", and the ultimate object of the game is to achieve the title of "President."   Each player starts the game with one "Vote", and to obtain the Presidency you must attempt to convince the other players to give you their Votes.  The winner is the person who, at the end of the game, has amassed more Votes than anyone else.  You can cajole the other players into giving you their Vote using just about any means necessary -- threats, vows, charisma, lies and attempts to instill hope and/or fear into the other players are all popular tactics.  Promises made during the game can be broken with relative impunity.

I love negotiation games, and this one does have an intriguing premise.  But The Presidential Election gets a big thumbs down.  There are so many things wrong with this game that I couldn't even name them all, but here's a quick rundown of some of the more egregious.

It is unbalanced

According to the rules, almost any of the players may run for President if they want.  In practice, though, only players who start the game with lots of money or influence have even the slightest chance of actually winning the game.  To make matters worse, money is seemly distributed at random before the game starts, so one player might begin with millions of dollars while another might start with nothing.  As for influence, having a relative who has successfully played the game in the past is a huge boon, even if you personally can't play especially skillfully.

Furthermore, a player may run for President by themselves if they start the game extraordinarily rich, but most have no choice but to join one of the Political Parties (which can supply a player with additional funds and power).  Hypothetically there can be any number of Political Parties in the game, but only two start the game with enough cash to really aid a Candidate.  So despite the fact that hundreds of millions of people can play The Presidential Election, only two will really have a chance at winning.  Because of this, most players instead strive for an alternate victory:  selecting one of two Candidates and trying to ensure that this player wins the game.  This route is rather unsatisfactory, but most players have no choice but to take it.
 

It has an unacceptably long playing time

I love "Civilization", but I rarely play it anymore -- I just don't have the time for an eight-hour game these days.  But when I do play it, at least I feel like it's time well spent.  Not so for The Presidential Election, which has an exhausting number of phases.   First there's the announcement of candidacy, then the Candidates campaign, ads are run,  new players have to register if they wish to use their Vote, and finally Primary Elections are held.  Sadly, you then have to repeat the entire round a second time for the "General Election."

The game generates enough fun and excitement for a good 90 minute pastime, but I find the typically running time of nearly two years a bit excessive.
 

It's difficult to keep the players interested in the game

There's nothing more frustrating than games with people who can't keep their mind on the contest:  you're playing Modern Art and one person keeps bidding absurdly high because they don't want to be bothered with the math, or someone keeps wandering away from the table just as their turn comes around.

It's very hard to keep all 300 million players of The Presidential Election interested -- perhaps because of the long length mentioned above, perhaps because many feel (justifiably) that if they aren't one of the Candidates then there's really no point in playing at all.  In all the games I've played, nearly half the players drop out before the final Vote is taken.  Worse, many players will not pay attention during the match and then cast their Vote on the end based on little more than hunches, or at the behest of one of the other players.  Needless to say, this can be quite an annoyance to those who take the game seriously!

There's too much "Metagaming"

"Metagaming" is the act of considering factors outside of the scope of a game when making decisions.  Say, for example, that you were playing "Settlers of Catan" with a couple, and the husband never played the robber on a hex touching one of his wife's settlements because he didn't want to hurt her feelings. This metagaming generally ruins the game for everyone, because the proscribed boundaries of the game are no longer relevant.

The Presidential Election has so many metagaming aspects that I couldn't even list them all. The main problem stems from the fact the The Presidential Election is just one of a whole host games that are all intertwined, so the outcome of The Presidential Election might, in turn, have some influence on other contests such as The Supreme Court, The Congress and The Economy.   It certainly doesn't help that some Candidates insist that you ignore these metagaming aspects, while others insist that the metagaming elements are the only things of importance.

It suffers from the Kingmaker problem

Most gamers are familiar with the Kingmaker Problem -- when a player who has no hope of victory is put in a position of choosing which of the other players will ultimately win the game.  When this happens, the final victory generally feels hollow  to everyone involved (except, perhaps, to the person who benefits from the Kingmaker's decision).  The Presidential Election has the Kingmaker Problem so badly that it -- or the threat of it -- has cropped up in almost game I have played.

In one game I played, for example, the match came down to three players:  Bill, George and Ross.  Ross had no chance of winning, but decided to press on anyhow.   Bill ultimately won, but many of the other players said that if Ross had decided to drop out of the Presidential Race they would have voted for George instead.  In other words, Ross' decision to continue playing - even though he knew he couldn't win -- may have cost George the game.

In the game I am currently playing, almost an identical situation is taking place between two players named Al and Ralph.  It's making a lot of players angry at each other -- never a good sign in a game!
 

The rules are very poorly written

Rules that are unnecessarily complex can ruin a player's enjoyment of a game.  This problem is compounded when the rules are also poorly written and ambiguous, forcing the players to rely on interpretation, guesswork and consensus just to keep things moving.  While the rules for the first edition of The Presidential Election were generally considered well-written, recent additions -- with a whole mosaic of amendments and errata -- are a mess.

Take the rules for Political Ads, for example.  This is how they work, in theory:  a Candidate may spend his own funds to try and convince the other players to give him their Votes.   Other funds, however -- those owned by the Political Parties -- are not allowed to be used in the promotion of a particular Candidate.  Instead, these funds can only be used to draw attention to "issues" that are of concern to the players.  Unfortunately, the rules outlining this distinction are so vague that almost any Candidate can openly cheat, secure in the knowledge that even the most ardent rules lawyer will not be able to prove that a law is being broken.  Political Parties typically run issue ads that blatantly denigrate and distort the positions of their rivals, and the Parties then claim that slandering Candidate 1 is legally distinct from promoting Candidate 2.  This adherence to the letter of the rules -- while merrily treading on the spirit of the game -- is so common that most players don't even bother trying to fight it.  And to make matters worse, creating house rules to correct these flaws is nearly impossible - it requires a procedure so complicated (and involving a aspect of the game, the Legislative Branch,  that I don't even want to get into) that a new rule will only be accepted every half dozen years or so.

It has a terrible scoring system

And speaking of overly complicated mechanisms ...

A clever scoring system can make or break a game -- take Euphrates and Tigris, for example, or Web of Power.  But the scoring system for The Presidential Election is so convoluted that most players aren't even aware of it.  It works like this.  Everyone plays as if the person who gets the most Votes wins the game, but when it comes time to tally the score the victory is actually awarded in a different manner.

Each player (and, therefore, his Vote) belongs to one of 50 suits, or "States".  And each State has number of "Electoral Votes" which are supposed to be proportional to the number of players belonging to each State (but aren't, really).  Surprisingly, the players' Votes don't go to Candidate -- instead, they go towards the "Electors" (other players specially chosen by the States' Political Parties), and these Electors then cast Electoral Votes for the winner.  Because all of the Electoral Votes for a State go to the same person, a great number of the player Votes will simply be discarded at the end of the game, meaning that they played the whole game for nothing.  Worse, according to the rules the Electors aren't even bound to vote for the person they were supposed to, so at the last minute an Elector could vote for himself or "Ben Dover" if he really wanted to.

This extra layer of voting in the scoring system is so confusing that many people just want to get rid of it.  But as I mentioned above, fixing the game is almost as difficult as playing the game.

Conclusion

I could go on and on about the flaws of The Presidential Election, but I think you get the point.  Needless to say, I am less than enamored with this game, and must therefore give it only one Ace Up.

"Why one," you ask, "instead of none?"  For the simple reason that the game will be played whether you want it to or not, and the outcome of the game will affect you even if you opt not to participate.  I'd be happy if I never had to play The Presidential Election again, but, unfortunately, choosing not play only ensures that you will lose in the long run.